2 Jul 2025 · 30 min
In this episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer’s Show, host Lisa Skinner warns caregivers that Lyme disease can masquerade as Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. She illustrates the point with high‑profile misdiagnoses—Kris Kristofferson, actor Chris Christopherson, and singer Shania Twain—who were initially treated for Alzheimer’s before Lyme disease was identified. Skinner then provides a detailed overview of Lyme disease, citing CDC data on tick‑borne transmission, early signs (bullseye rash, flu‑like symptoms) and later manifestations (neurologic issues such as brain fog, Bell’s palsy, vision and hearing problems, cardiac involvement, arthritis, chronic fatigue). She discusses diagnostic challenges, the lack of a definitive test for chronic Lyme, and standard antibiotic treatment (e.g., doxycycline). The episode emphasizes the importance of ruling out reversible causes—urinary‑tract infections, thyroid disorders, Lyme disease—before labeling a patient with dementia. Practical caregiver advice includes monitoring for infections, advocating for doctors who listen, and seeking support through Skinner’s “Minding Dementia” Facebook group. The episode concludes with a call to action to share resources and stay informed.
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Are you caring for a loved one with dementia? You don't have to figure this out all on your own. Welcome to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's, the show that helps you reimagine a new relationship with your loved one, a relationship a little more free of stress and anxiety. Join host Lisa Skinner and her 30+ years of experience as she guides you on a new path to a better relationship with those you care for. Here's Lisa.
Hello everybody, welcome, welcome, welcome to another new episode of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. I'm Lisa Skinner, your host. How many of you listening out there today remember the movie actor and singer by the name of Kris Kristofferson? I'm sure many of you do. He was such a huge star, and I had the biggest crush on him when I was a teenager. I don't know if y'all remember this, but if you don't, I'm telling you He is a 4-time Grammy winner. He won the— an Academy Award for Best Music and Original Song Score for the 1985 film Songwriter, where he starred with Willie Nelson. And his most famous song was Me and Bobby McGee. He recorded that in 1969, and then it became a huge hit when Janis Joplin sang it on her 1971 album Pearl. Is this all coming back to you? Well, the reason why— oh, and he also starred in A Star Is Born in 1976 with Barbra Streisand. So the reason why I am bringing Kris Kristofferson up is because years ago I learned that Kris Kristofferson had been misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and had been treated for it for 3 years before they determined what he was really suffering about. And that's what I'm going to share with you during this episode. This is really important information for everybody to at least have filed in the back of your memory banks, because as it turns out, the symptoms of Lyme disease mimic a lot of the symptomology that we see in people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. So, I'm going to tell you his story. And then I'm going to jump into more details about Lyme disease. So, you'll have a little bit more information and details. So, you, you know, in case you get bitten by a tick and it's infected with Lyme disease, you'll know what to look for. So, Chris Christopherson, who always put forth an incredibly tough guy exterior. He dealt with health issues in his personal life, including memory loss. Those were his first symptoms. So the doctors ended up diagnosing him with Alzheimer's disease, but he continued to have other mysterious ailments. Eventually, because his symptoms were so similar to Lyme disease, he took a test which came back positive for Lyme disease. His wife Lisa Skinner Skinner told the Lyme Times, about 12 years ago, he was diagnosed first with fibromyalgia, which looking back should have been the first indication that a test for Lyme disease would have been warranted. Said his wife. But his doctors didn't even think to test for Lyme disease when they were testing him for Alzheimer's disease. So, she detailed his diagnosis to the Lyme Times, which is a publication, and she said, we suspect he's been infected with Lyme disease anywhere from 14 to 30 years because he used to have these chronic muscle spasms, which is a common symptom of Lyme disease. And they theorized that the doctors didn't even think to look for Lyme. But now we know it's everywhere and more and more people are showing up with Lyme disease from tick bites. In a June 2016 talk with Rolling Stone, Lisa Skinner Skinner explained her theory that when Chris was working on the film Disappearances in 2006, they suspect he may have been bitten by a tick because he was in the Vermont woods shooting it for nearly 6 weeks. According to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks, spread a bacteria called Borrelia to humans. If not treated immediately, it can affect the heart, the joints, and the nervous system. So after Chris, Kristofferson, started developing mysterious symptoms, including major memory loss, he was given medicine for Alzheimer's disease and treated for it for 3 years, but it wasn't working. And his wife stated, he was taking all these medications for things he didn't even have. And every one of these medications he was being given all have side effects or all had side effects. So when doctors finally realized that he actually had Lyme disease and not Alzheimer's disease, and then they gave him the proper medication for it, his wife Lisa Myers exclaimed, "All of a sudden, he was back." I got my Chris back. And of course he's passed away now, but he recovered to some degree but not completely because he lived with, um, ongoing, you know, memory loss and confusion throughout the rest of his life. And the other person that we all famously know about, but we don't necessarily know that she also lived with Lyme disease was the wonderful, talented Shania Twain. And she, as it turns out, she also fought a battle with Lyme disease. Many of you may not be aware of that. I know it was in the news periodically, but she had a very severe case of Lyme disease that was— the symptomology actually was different than what Kris Kristofferson experienced. So, I want to tell you her story. While touring in the year 2003 to promote her new music, Shania Twain's life was turned upside down by a tick bite she got while she was out horseback riding. The tick was infected with Lyme disease, and she did get Lyme disease, the star says in a documentary she produced. She says her symptoms were quite scary because before she was diagnosed, she'd be on a stage and she would be just so dizzy. Her head was just spinning, the room was spinning, everything was spinning. She was losing her balance, and she was genuinely afraid that she was going to fall off the stage at any moment. She was also having these very, very, very millisecond blackouts, she says, but regularly, every minute or every 30 seconds. The singer also feared that the illness would impact her voice, especially after she started to lose control over her vocals. My voice was never the same again, says Shania Twain. She thought she was going to lose her voice forever. I thought that was it, and I would never ever be able to sing again. She even underwent a throat surgery and took a break from the spotlight. The surgeries that she underwent for the Lyme disease infection were very intense, and very, very different from a traditional vocal cord operation. But she eventually recovered and returned to the stage in the year 2017. So she had this for a long time. She revealed in an interview she did with ITV's Loose Women that doctors originally didn't know what were causing her symptoms. And that it took years to get to the bottom of what was affecting her voice. She spent time healing her throat and recovering through therapy, but said that it didn't change or help her voice recover. So what her article tells us is that Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease, which is a disease transmitted to humans, anthropods, in the United States. It is transmitted through a bite from an infected black-legged tick, or also known as a deer tick. If left untreated, Symptoms can spread to your joints, to your heart, and to the nervous system, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, the most common symptoms of Lyme disease that pop up within 3 to 30 days of a bite typically include flu-like symptoms, fever, chills, headache, fatigue, muscle and joint aches, swollen lymph nodes, and a rash that looks like a bullseye. I remember once my son was bitten by a tick, but he didn't know it, but a bullseye, a round bullseye looking a rash showed up on his leg, and we knew that that was indicative of a tick bite. And he went to the doctor and was treated with an antibiotic, and he was fine. But people don't always notice these bullseye-looking rashes, and they don't always show up. You could experience these symptoms months after infection, according to the CDC, including severe headaches and neck stiffness, rashes on other areas of your body, facial palsy, and I'll explain that to you in a minute, arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling, intermittent pain in your tendons, muscles, joints, and bones, and heart palpitations or irregular heartbeat called Lyme carditis. Also, as Shania explained, she experienced episodes of dizziness, and also shortness of breath is another symptom. Lyme disease is most commonly diagnosed from symptoms or known exposure to ticks. If often treated successfully with antibiotics, it can be cured, according to the CDC. Now, this is surprising, that nearly 500,000 people a year are diagnosed with Lyme disease in the US. For about 75% of them, the first sign will be a skin lesion that appears 1 to 4 weeks after being bitten by an infected deer tick. But it might not look how you'd imagine. Only 20% of these lesions take on the classic bullseye appearance commonly associated with Lyme disease. Other early symptoms of Lyme disease mimic what you might experience with the flu, and I listed those for you. Um, I'll just repeat it real quickly: fever, chills, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes. Within the first 5 to 10 days of Lyme disease infection, most people will only experience these relatively ordinary symptoms if they're promptly diagnosed with and treated for Lyme, which generally means 2 to 3 weeks of the being given the antibiotic doxycycline. Your story ends there. But For up to 10% of people, most of whom aren't diagnosed or treated promptly, the disease triggers lingering serious ongoing symptoms. Researchers aren't exactly sure what causes Chronic Lyme Disease but speculate it could be the result of factors like persistent bacteria or genetic predispositions. When someone has it, there's almost nothing we can do, says Dr. Amy Edwards, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine who specializes in infectious diseases. The complex symptoms often stump doctors. But once it's caught you off guard a few times, you start looking for it everywhere. Every time someone comes in with weird symptoms in the summer, you're like, okay, could this be Lyme disease? So here's a look at some of the surprising symptoms that Lyme disease can cause, especially as it's progressing. Heart problems. When Lyme disease isn't treated effectively early on, it can end up impacting the cardiac, neurologic, and rheumatologic symptoms, says Dr. Amy Duckrow, an infectious disease specialist with Kaiser Permanente in Colorado. She says in 1 out of every 100 patients, for example, Lyme bacteria enters the heart tissues, which is called Lyme carditis. This kind of heart inflammation can lead to lightheadedness, fainting, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and/or chest pain. In some cases, people develop atrioventricular block, which is a blockage that prevents electrical signals from moving from the upper to the lower chambers of the heart. When the blockage gets particularly bad, patients often need a temporary pacemaker paired with IV antibiotics, says Dr. Sunya Shweig, who's on the scientific advisory board of the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, which is a nonprofit that aims to accelerate medical, accelerate medical breakthroughs for Lyme disease. He wants people to be aware that this can happen and to take symptoms like new heart palpitations very seriously. He says it's treatable, it's curable, but it can also kill you if it's not caught. So it's a really big deal. Then, just like Kris Kristofferson, many people experience the brain fog. This is a story about another person who is featured in this particular article by the name of Kirsten Stein. She suffered from brain fog with her Lyme disease, and she says it took more than 2 years and 15 13 doctor's appointments to be diagnosed with Lyme disease. During that time, she struggled with an array of mental and physical symptoms. The most alarming was the brain fog and short-term memory loss that clouded her every single day. She recalls running into a close friend, for example, and not being able to summon the names of the women's the woman's kids despite seeing them multiple times a week. I remember thinking, "This is not good." And during a conversation with her husband, she couldn't conjure up the word glass and started pointing at things. While playing a game with friends, she excused herself to the restroom because she couldn't think clearly enough to participate. Another time she dropped her son off at school and 5 minutes later asked her daughter where her son was. It was absolutely terrifying, she says. Many patients report similar experiences with brain fog, Dr. Schweiss says. It's likely caused by Lyme-induced inflammation into the central nervous system. We see a huge amount of brain effects. Including difficulty focusing, difficulty thinking, difficulty reading and absorbing information. It can be extremely disruptive to people's lives because they simply can't function. They can't go about their normal learning and working and paying attention and doing projects and following through. With their tasks. No wonder Kris Kristofferson was misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, right? Okay, then we have the palsy component of Lyme disease, often referred to as Bell's palsy. There are 12 nerves called the cranial nerves that originate in our brains and play an important role in sense and movement for different parts of our head, face, neck, and torso. Lyme disease can affect those nerves, triggering Bell's palsy, which causes sudden weakness or paralysis on one side of a person's face. It's especially common in adults, she says, and typically appears several weeks to months after you're infected with the bacteria from Lyme disease. Who would have thought that a tick bite could result in all of these symptoms that show up that are very similar to Alzheimer's disease? Then you have— can have eye problems. In the early stages of Lyme disease, people sometimes experience eye irritation and conjunctivitis. As the condition progresses, you can get cranial nerve inflammation or infections, and this can cause double vision called diplopia, says Dr. Schweig. Research suggests Lyme can cause sudden vision loss, damage to the optic nerve, and neurotropic keratitis, which is decreased corneal sensation. It's also possible to experience blurry eye vision, eye floaters, tearing, extreme sensitivity to light, and inflammation of the retina. And then Lyme disease can also create hearing problems in people. The explanation for that is that the inflammation that Lyme disease causes can affect the inner ear, leading to a variety of symptoms including hearing loss and tinnitus, or what's also referred to as ringing in the ears, Dr. Schwaig says. Ear issues can also trigger dizziness and balance problems. So what scientists have come to learn is that they have identified that Lyme disease genes are responsible for these severe symptoms. In one study that included 216 people with a tick-borne disease, 162 had hearing problems, making them a frequent manifestation according to the study authors. The most common complaint was tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, and that occurred in 77% of the participants, followed by vertigo and dizziness in 54% of them, headache in 39%, and unilateral sensorineural hearing loss, or hearing loss in one ear, which occurred in 17% of the study participants. It also can cause arthritis. One of the most common symptoms of Lyme that Edward sees in young people is arthritis. It often happens the same way. Kids show up in the emergency room in the late fall with a big swollen knee and perhaps a low-grade fever. Sometimes they also have a limp or are unable to put weight on their leg. It's actually not crazy painful, but it hurts, but it's not debilitating, she says. Everybody's like, did you injure it? But it turns out they're experiencing arthritis caused by a tick bite, even been aware of during the summer. "It's actually the most common way that Lyme disease presents in children," Edwards says. Kids typically get better once they start a 4-week regimen of doxycycline. The problem, she adds, is that not all clinicians make the connection, which can delay diagnosis and proper treatment. Research also suggests that Lyme disease can cause persistent fatigue, even when it's diagnosed and treated early. In one study, participants with a history of Lyme were 8 to 15 times more likely to report moderate or severe fatigue than those who had never had Lyme disease. So, this is pretty startling to to find out that Lyme disease can actually produce as much damage as it does. It's really a weird, tricky illness. And the thing to know is it presents itself so differently in everybody, says this doctor. Finding a doctor who believes you and understands that what you're telling them is the truth and who wants to help you is huge and the key to your hopeful recovery. So just one more thing. Like, I always used to tell everybody in the buildings that I managed as a regional director, if somebody came in and was telling me that all of a sudden their mother developed Alzheimer's disease or dementia and it came on really fast. The first thing I would say is, did you have her checked for a urinary tract infection? Because Alzheimer's disease or related dementia doesn't happen that quickly. It takes years to do the damage to the brain before the symptoms really start showing up. And in so many of those cases, they'd come back to me and say, you were right. We went to the doctor. She had a urinary tract infection. The point being is the symptoms that are presented with a urinary tract infection, especially when it gets into the bloodstream, mirror those of dementia. And that's the reason why I am talking to you today about Lyme disease. Especially because Chris Christopherson is the perfect example of somebody who was misdiagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease, and it turns out he really had Lyme disease. So, want to bring this to everybody's attention. If you're caring for somebody or you have a loved one who all of a sudden starts displaying any of these symptoms that I shared with you in today's episode, I would ask your doctor to rule out Lyme disease just because there is no definitive test yet or conclusive test for Alzheimer's disease. They go through a process of elimination. So we want to make sure that we're not dealing with a urinary tract infection, we're not dealing with a thyroid condition, and we're not staring Lyme disease in the face due to a tick bite. Can be treated. Okay, so that's what I have for you today. I hope this is valuable and alert people to it. This is become a serious, serious health condition, especially as this article said, in, um, United States. More and more and more people are experiencing Lyme disease. So that's it for today, and, uh, I will post the resources where I got the information for I shared 3 different articles with you all today. It'll be in the show notes. And I hope you all are taking away some very valuable information from this episode today of The Truth, Lies Alzheimer's Show. Again, I'm Lisa Skinner, your host, and I promise I'll be back next week with another new episode for you. Take care for now, and I look forward to having you back in a week. See you then. Bye-bye.
Thank you for listening to Truth, Lies Alzheimer's. We hope you found something in today's episode that helps. We understand that caring for a loved one with dementia can be the challenge of a lifetime, but you don't have to do it alone. If you're ready for exclusive access to even more great content and resources, head on Swing over to Facebook and join Lisa Skinner's Minding Dementia support group. We're a community of like-minded caregivers, and we're here to help.
